Bellator 81 winner Marlon Sandro says no more promises – 'time to get the work done'

If you were wondering if Marlon Sandro was back, he answered for you quickly on Friday night.

Sandro (23-4 MMA, 6-2 BFC) this past May dropped his second straight featherweight tournament final, and there were questions of whether the 35-year-old Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt had enough left to compete at the championship levels.

Sandro tried to give his best answer to that when he put Dustin Neace (23-19 MMA, 0-1 BFC) to sleep at Bellator 81.

Bellator 81 took place at the Ryan Center at The University of Rhode Island in Kingston, with a main card, including Sandro-Neace, on MTV2.

Sandro said before the fight he was hoping a win would propel him with some momentum into Bellator’s next featherweight tournament. Afterward, Sandro said he had gone back to the drawing board after his May loss to Daniel Straus in the Season 6 featherweight tournament finals.

“I did what I said I’d do,” Sandro told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “I worked harder on my jiu-jitsu, and it showed. In my previous fight, Daniel Straus took my back – and that really rubbed me the wrong way. After all, jiu-jitsu was my first martial art, not boxing or muay Thai. I feel it’s my obligation to have a good ground game.

“This time, I did it well and got the submission. (Neace) even threatened my foot, but I knew how to deal with that. I knew how to escape, and how to take his back.”

Now Sandro can turn his attention to what comes next. But instead of having a revenge-seeking mentality for his loss to Straus or his knockout loss to current champ Pat Curran in the Season 4 tournament finals, Sandro has changed his stance.

Sure, he’d like to have a chance to get those losses back. And one day, he still may. But right now, it’s all about improvement and working just to get back to another tournament final – next time with a different outcome.

“I had it in my head that I needed to avenge my loss to Curran, since he’s the first and only fighter to knock me out,” he said. “(But) nowadays, I’m thinking differently. I’m thinking forward. If we face each other again, I’ll seek to improve my training to defeat either one of them. But what I want for now is continue winning and win the title, God willing.”

“I’ll train and improve. I’ll stop promising things now because I’ve done enough of that. Now it’s time to get the work done.”

Check out highlights of Sandro’s submission of Neace, as well as the rest of the Bellator 81 main card, in the video above.

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